What command line tools would you use to see which USB devices are attached to your Linux computer?

There's several commands for that actually. One can always filter out the output, using text processing tools, generally their output is small enough to read in one screenfull.

blkid

This neat command by itself , as the name suggests, shows info about block devices. With -L you can search for specific device with a label (name).

df

This neat command is part of coreutils package, shows the block size and usage of the "device files". It shows only informations about those devices that are mounted ( in other words, linked to a folder somewhere ). For instance,

Tells me that my windows partition on the second hard drive is linked to /media/WINDOWS partition.

udisksctl

Very convenient command that lists models and device file to which a disk is linked. In the example above my Radeon R7 SSD is linked to /dev/sda device.

If we go into more details, udisksctl info -b /dev/sda will list lots of additional info , including size and symlinks.

If we wanna go wild, udisksctl dump will produce verbose output on all the disks.

parted and fdisk

Both commands are disks utilities, used for partitioning, resizing, and many more other fun things. Both however, require use of sudo. Both output great verbose information

find

This is a more "hands on" approach. All the devices have a special device file under Linux ( remember Unix philosophy that says everything is a file ? It applies here the best ). Knowing that there are files /dev/disk/by-label we could search that directory, or we could just search /dev/disk in general. Definitely a tool that more advanced users can appreciate

lsblk

Already covered by Jacob.

mount

Lists all mounted filesystems. Can be filtered with grep to look for specific filesystem. It's analogous to doing grep 'DISKNAME OR UUID' /proc/mounts

lshw

This command provides info about all the hardware on the system. In particular, you can view info about disks using lshw -c disk for whole device, or lshw -c volume for partitions, and you should see output with lines something like this:

Nowadays, many computer peripherals such as webcams, mice, scanners, printers, hard drives, USB (Pendrive) now come as USB devices. Once these devices are connected to the Desktop or server it's important to know the device name or device path. This helps to identify USB devices for the tasks such as formatting.

In Linux, all device files are stored in /dev directory and must be available to the OS during the system boot.

In this guide, we will show you the various ways to list USB devices on Linux. Most commands mentioned here should work on all Linux distributions.

List USB Device Names Using df Command

The df command is a useful command that can help list all mounted volumes, including your USB drives.

Once a USB device is plugged into a Linux system, especially for Desktop, it is automatically mounted in the /media partition and becomes ready for use.

From the output above, I have 1 USB drive /dev/sdb with 2 partitions /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2

List USB Device Name using lsblk Command

Lsblk command is used to list all block devices on a Linux system. From the list, you can filter USB devices using the grep command.

For example:

To retrieve additional information such as the UUID, manufacturer and filesystem type, use the blkid command as shown.

List USB Device Names Using fdisk Command

You can use the good old fdisk command that is used for partitioning volumes to list all the partitions on the Linux system, including the USB drives.

The command will display detailed information about your USB volume including the partitions, size of the volume, sectors, and the filesystem type.

List USB Devices Details using lsusb Command

The lsusb command, also known as the “List USB” command, is used in Linux to list all the USB devices attached to the system.

The output above displays the Bus ID, Device ID, USB ID, and the vendor or manufacturer of the USB devices

The lsusb command simply lists the connected devices and does not provide further information about the usb devices.  

For more information about the attached USB devices use the dmesg command. The dmesg command also known as “driver message” or “display the message” is used for examining the boot messages. Additionally, it is used for debugging hardware-related issues and printing messages generated by device drivers.

You can use the dmesg command and grep to narrow down to USB devices.

Also, you can pipe the output of dmesg command to less for easier scrolling.

On the output, you can search for a specific string by pressing the forward slash key ( / ) on your keyboard followed by the name or Device ID of the USB device.

In my case, I'm searching for more information regarding a USB device called SanDisk, which is actually my removable pen drive.

List USB controllers and devices using usb-devices

The usb-devices command is a shell script that allows you to list all the USB controllers and the USB devices connected to your PC. It prints out details of the USB device such as the manufacturer, product name, serial number, and so much more. Here's the output of the command:

Conclusion

In this guide, we have demonstrated different ways to list the USB devices attached to the Linux system.

Which is your favorite command to list USB? Please provide your suggestions and feedback in the comment section.